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Lately, we seem to be a nation obsessed with zombies. Although the concept of a zombie originally stems from folklore, over the last few decades pop culture has taken the idea of them as "undead beings" and run with it – most recently in the popular TV show "The Walking Dead."

But what if corpses could reanimate? What legal issues would arise at the prospect of a zombie apocalypse in the real world?

ASU law professor Adam Chodorow has examined those very questions in a paper titled “Death and Taxes and Zombies," which is garnering national attention.

Over the course of a 25-page paper, Chodorow addresses some of the issues that governments would face if the dead were to rise up and walk amongst the living. For example, would zombies be considered alive?

“Most self-motivated zombies likely would be considered alive under most state law definitions. Such zombies must have a biological mechanism by which they think and move,” Chodorow writes.

Chodorow's paper has been featured nationally in other publications such as the New York Times and Forbes.